The battle had ended.
The Rotting Cathedral stood still once more, its haunted echoes silenced by the scent of burning flesh and the crackling of dying sigils. Selene Nocturna stepped through the ruins, her gown tattered but her poise untouched. Blackened veins pulsed beneath her pale skin, remnants of the hunter's holy strike.
Varek Hollowborne lay motionless at her feet. His scythe, shattered. His armor, cracked. His defiance, however, had not faded.
Selene crouched beside him, her lips curling into a bloodstained smile.
"You fought well, hunter," she murmured, tilting his face toward her. His silver eyes had not lost their hatred, even as his body failed him.
"You're not walking away from this," he rasped. His breath reeked of death.
"You assume I intend to walk at all."
Her fingers traced his jaw, cold and delicate, but tinged with venom. A necrotic pulse surged through her touch, sinking into his dying skin. Varek grimaced, but he did not scream.
"What... are you... doing?"
Selene leaned closer, her lips hovering near his ear.
"I could raise you as one of mine. Make you dance to my hymns, whisper my will through your rotting tongue."
Varek's jaw clenched.
"Then do it. And I'll rip your throat out with my own teeth."
Selene laughed—a soft, eerie sound, full of amusement and something darker.
"Oh, dear hunter. I like you better this way."
She pressed her lips against his forehead. Not a kiss of affection, but a branding. A stain of decay, a promise of suffering. Her magic seeped into his bones, a slow poison that would rot him from within, but never let him die.
Varek shuddered. He felt it. The creeping death. The inevitability of it.
"You will watch the Hollowborn Order crumble. You will feel your body betray you, piece by piece, until you are nothing but a whisper in the dark."
Selene stood, wiping the blood from her mouth.
"And when you beg for release..."
She turned, stepping into the cathedral's cursed fog.
The door slammed shut behind her.
Varek Hollowborne lay alone, in the silence of the dying cathedral, his heartbeat slowing—not to stop, but to suffer.